Tuesday, November 3, 2009

One Year Ago Today

I have a tiny, 750 square-foot house. But I’ve somehow made room for one of those enormous Obama "Hope" posters. You know the one – you’ve seen it a million times. This one sits framed in my kitchen – on it are the signatures of many of the volunteers I worked with on the Obama campaign last year.

Every day I am reminded of the miracle we pulled off. Every day I’m reminded how, in our congressional district alone (CA-36), 1,500 volunteers made over 600,000 phone calls to swing states all over the country, and sent hundreds of volunteers to Nevada and New Mexico to get out the vote and turn those states blue.

Every day I am reminded that change can only happen when citizens stand together and take ownership over their government, their country, their communities and themselves. Every day I am reminded our work does not end with a campaign, but rather begins with a new President, a new government, and a new day.

Tonight, as I write this, Republicans have taken the governorships of Virginia and New Jersey, yet in NY-23 Democrat Bill Owens beat out "Conservative Party" candidate Doug Hoffman, and Democrat John Garamendi easily defeated Republican David Harmer in CA-10 by running as a staunch progressive in what had previously been considered a "moderate" democratic district.

And in a heartbreaking reminder of Proposition 8 in California, another marriage equality proposition hangs in the balance – this time in Maine.

Every day I am reminded our work does not end with a campaign.

Our President inherited a shit sandwich from one of the most venal and incompetent administrations our country has ever known. It is all he and his administration can do keep our country from sinking into another Great Depression or stumbling into WWIII.

What’s left of the Republican party is becoming the American Taliban right before our eyes while Conservative Democrats threaten to derail health care legislation at every turn.

President Obama won the Nobel Peace prize this year, and we are poised to send thousands more troops to Afghanistan. My brother-in-law will be returning to Iraq for his third tour of duty this month, leaving a wife and three children behind. He joined the Army 15 years ago because when his wife got pregnant with their first son and they couldn’t afford health insurance. They still can’t.

Every day I am reminded our work does not end with a campaign.

I believe in my President. But I don’t expect him to "rescue" us. We entered into an implied contract when we helped get Barack Obama elected. We expected Change, we expected to be respected, empowered and included, we expected him to fight, and we expected to join him in that fight.

That contract, in many ways, has only been partially fulfilled.

As way of example, I take Obama at his word when he says he believes the public option is the best way to reform our health care system. But here’s what I’ve never heard him say:

While the public option may be the best way to bring reform to our health care system, it’s not the easiest or surest road to passing health care reform through congress – in fact it may be the most difficult. I understand this risk and willing to take it, because together I believe we can make this dream a reality.

Instead, I believe the President and his advisers have chosen a different path, one they hoped was less risky, one that would more likely give them a victory that’s eluded every President since Roosevelt. They chose triggers. They chose Olympia Snowe. They have, all along the way, chose to manage expectations for the public option instead of drawing a line in the sand and fighting for it. Not because they’re corrupt, or deceitful or because they don’t believe in efficacy of the public option, but because they don’t believe the system would allow it to happen.

They say politics is the art of the possible.

This is what they believe is possible.

I believe they’ve created a self-fulfilling prophecy, and by doing so, have made the possible finite.

If the American people want the president to be more like the Barack Obama they elected, maybe they should start acting more like the voters who elected him, who forcibly and undeniably moved the political establishment to where it didn’t want to go.

So it’s up to us – all of us – to hold our President accountable. To support him when he needs it, but also to hold his feet to the fire when he chooses the merely possible over the audacity of hope.

We have to make sure the path against the public option, against withdrawal from Afghanistan and Iraq, against the climate change bill, against repealing "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell", and against federal marriage equality is more difficult than the path for it.